News release: “On March 11, 2011, northeast Japan was hit with the strongest recorded earthquake in that nation’s history, measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which together left more than 20,000 people dead or missing, also damaged much of Japan’s infrastructure, especially the country’s electric power grid.[1] The economic impact of the disaster on Japan, including its impact on the Japanese export trade to the United States, remained uncertain at the time, in terms of both the availability and prices of Japanese goods…What was different with the 2011 earthquake was the impact on Japan’s overall power grid from the damage done to a major nuclear powerplant. That damage led to rolling blackouts which, combined with the damage from the quake, forced a number of major companies, such as Toyota, Sony, Honda, Nissan, Toshiba, and Texas Instruments, to either shut down or cut back production at multiple plants.[3] Industrial production in Japan, which had risen 1.9 percent from January 2010 to February 2011, plunged 6.4 percent in March in the aftermath of the disaster.[4] Once the power grid was largely restored, and thanks in part to the spare-production capacity in Japan, industrial production recovered to nearly the February level by July.”